Stream It Or Skip It: ‘1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything’ on AppleTV+, A Multi-Part Series About A Very Big Year

With a wealth of archival footage and soundbites from the musicians who were there, 1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything (AppleTV+) touches on everything from the lasting message of protest in the music of Marvin Gaye to the political, cultural, and musical firestorm that was the War in Vietnam. Five decades later, the sights and sounds of the dawn of a new decade are still reverberating.

1971: THE YEAR THAT MUSIC CHANGED EVERYTHING: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Footage from the Hard Hat Riot on May 8, 1970 in New York City captures hundreds angry men in Dickies and their yellow protective headgear pushing and shoving throngs of student anti-war protestors. A news report crackles over the scene, describing the “deep divide” in American culture between those against the Nixon administration’s Vietnam War policies and the block of Americans who didn’t protest, what the president in a 1969 speech had called the “Silent Majority.”

The Gist: This eight-part documentary series is executive produced by Asif Kapadia and James Gay-Rees, the team who won an Oscar for Amy, their 2015 film about the life and death of English singer Amy Winehouse. Based on the 2016 book 1971 — Never A Dull Moment: Rock’s Golden Year by British music journalist David Hepworth, it parses the representative moments of its tumultuous titular year, a time when the Beatles had just split up, the war in Vietnam raged, musicians everywhere were giving voice to protest, and students took to the streets in vast numbers to foment for change. On January 20 of that year, Marvin Gaye issued “What’s Going On,” and the song’s seamless blend of Gaye’s multi-tracked vocals, aching lyrical melancholy, and a sumptuous R&B groove made it one of the year’s key songs. 1971 features a great, extended live version of “What’s Going On” with Gaye’s effortless vocals out front, as well as audio of interviews with the late singer-songwriter.

If Gaye’s What’s Going On record became the heartbeat of 1971, then John Lennon was its most strident voice. With the Beatles finished and gone their separate ways, Lennon was recording his second solo album in his home studio with producer Phil Spector and his wife, Yoko Ono. This episode of The Year That Music Changed Everything utilizes footage from those sessions at length, as well as interviews Lennon gave at the time offering his support for the anti-war protests in America, the struggle for Bangladeshi independence from Pakistan, and the role artists have as speakers for a cause. “If a musician uses his talent to sing that,” Lennon says in praise of Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” “then that’ll do.” And later, the sessions for his legendary song “Imagine” unfold on Lennon’s white grand piano with Ono at his elbow.

As peace protests draw hundreds of thousands into the streets of Washington, DC, and an obstinate President Nixon dismisses their calls for action as immature and dangerous, the FBI is shown to be tapping the phones of anti-war groups and even Lennon and Ono, once they moved to New York City. George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh, held in August of ‘71 at Madison Square Garden, also figures into this episode, with some terrific shots of the participants (Harrison jamming with Bob Dylan, Leon Russell glowering over his cigarette) plus Harrison’s immaculate white suit and polka dot shirt combo.

As the first episode of 1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything draws to a close, Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues” plays to a montage of the poverty, urban decay, and discrimination that was prevailing in America, and Gaye’s line about “trigger happy policing” feels all too contempoary.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Seventies, a Tom Hanks-produced documentary series that first aired on CNN in 2015, presented a thousand-foot view of the cultural and social upheavals that defined the era, and even named its episode focusing on music “What’s Goin’ On.” And while it isn’t a show, the 2014 documentary 1971 took a closer look at the burglary of a Pennsylvania FBI office by militant anti-war activists on the night of the prize fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, a storyline that weaves its way through the narrative of 1971‘s first episode.

Our Take: The creators of 1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything have rightly chosen full immersion as their medium. There are no cutaways here to the era’s surviving musical icons or political animals, grizzled and jaded and sitting in director’s chairs as they hash out what went down 50 years ago. Nope. Archival footage is the hero here, everything from tear gas canisters arcing into the students at Kent State and those lying bleeding after the National Guard shootings, to a raw live performance of “Ohio” by Crosby, Stills & Nash that leaps off the screen with nervy energy. Audio interviews accompany the montages, and are lent particular power in their juxtaposition. As John Lennon and Yoko Ono are in the foreground, exploring their new home of New York City, the towers of the World Trade Center rise mostly completed on the skyline of lower Manhattan. “I don’t know how much effect we have,” Lennon is heard to say about his music giving platform to protest. “But what’s the alternative? The apathetic aren’t bothered by anything.” It would be learned later that some of the very construction workers that helped build the WTC participated in the Hard Hat Riots.

The portrait of Richard Nixon as a stubborn, power-hungry despot that tracks throughout 1971 is particularly galling, with the president’s own friends saying his favorite word was “cocksucker” and his outright dismissal of the protests surging nationwide in favor of propping up his Silent Majority. When even the Ray Conniff Singers tell you to stop dropping bombs, and from the stage of a presidential dinner to boot, you might think about listening. Of course, Nixon didn’t, and instead he listened to everyone else who was taped in the Oval Office, and his administration’s dogged support for the War in Vietnam as well as the FBI surveilling and infiltrating antiwar groups to “enhance the paranoia” is some ugly, ugly stuff that has precedent even today.

Later installments of 1971 should prove as powerful as this lead ep, with names like “The End of the Acid Dream,” “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” and, simply, “Exile.”

Sex and Skin: Nothing here.

Parting Shot: With audio intertwining of John Lennon referring to those in power (and likely Nixon specifically) as “monsters,” another recording surfaces, this from the voice-activated system recently installed in the Oval Office. “The nuclear bomb?” Nixon is heard to ask Henry Kissinger, his National Security Advisor. As Kissinger demures, and the stationary shot of the White House hovers on camera, Nixon continues. “Does that bother you? I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christ’s sake.”

Sleeper Star: Bits of interviews with Chrissie Hynde appear throughout this first episode of 1971, and the Pretenders singer and songwriter, who was attending Kent State when on May 4th the National Guard killed 4 students and wounded 9, is an incisive voice on the era. “Every kid I knew was anti-Vietnam,” Hynde says. “And we were all at odds with the Silent Majority.” Later, she equates the trauma of being confronted with Napalm explosions on the nightly news while high on LSD.

Most Pilot-y Line: “We questioned what was going on,” Graham Nash says early on, using a loaded phrase. “And we thought music could change the world.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Part history lesson, part celebration of some truly iconic sounds, 1971: The Year that Music Changed Everything puts music at the heart of the social and cultural forces that surged in America at the start of a new decade.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges

Watch 1971 on Apple TV+